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Thursday, October 16, 2014

Football Fundamentals: Flare Control

A great addition to any playbook is a concept known as flare
control. Flare control is a RB route intended for the primary purpose of hold
and/or manipulating the underneath coverage. It can act as a block on a LB, it
can force defensive flow, and it can prevent the underneath coverage from
sinking into downfield developing routes. Likewise, “bubble control” can be
used in much the same way. Indiana, along with many other teams, use flare
control and bubble control as a part of their screen action and double screenpackage.

Flare Control

The most common application of flare control is to hold underneath coverage to prevent them from sinking underneath deeper routes. It helps prevent that defender from bringing pressure, it forces them to respect the underneath threat, and it doesn't allow them to gain depth.

On this play, the RB is no more than third or fourth in the
QB’s progression, depending on the QB’s read of the safeties. He is not
intended to be a primary receiver, instead, he is supposed to draw the
underneath coverage away from the mesh routes and hold the outside leverage
defender (in this case, cloud leverage) from sinking underneath the corner
route.

This flare route works to control and manipulate the defense
in either situation.

This is a concept that is used for a lot of downfield
passing attacks. Many teams that utilize outside zone run schemes or run
inverted veers or sweeps will utilize flare control in the same way. Here, OSU
uses it to run a Sail Concept. Here’s an example of Baylor utilizing flarecontrol in their play action attack off of inverted veer.

Flare Control Screens

For teams that are facing defenses that are undisciplined or
fast flow to the football, flare control can be used in multiple ways to get
the defense flowing away from the ball. Likewise, if you have a young OL that
struggles to identify assignments in space or get outside and pull on
traditional outside run screens, flare control can be used to set up middle
screens. In this way, if your OL isn’t adept at when to release on their screen
blocks, releasing early only simulates releasing for the flare screen and pulls
the defense away from the middle of the field.

Let’s look at Minnesota running a Flare Control TE Slip
against Northwestern. Here’s the alignment and the play design.

The flare control is going to suck either a DE peeling
outside or an OLB outside in coverage and form a clear tunnel in the middle of
the field.

As the rest of the defense works into inside gaps, the OL
can begin releasing out into blocks.

In this case, an OL trips. Often you’ll want an OL pealing
back to prevent a DL from retracing into the play. But if no one is there you
have two blockers leading down the field through a clear tunnel.

But it’s not just TE slip screens. WR tunnel screens can
also be utilized in much the same way. In this case, the flare control takes
the LB’s eyes off the far side of the field. The TE can release into what looks
like a route and kick out the leverage defender. The interior DL is sucked up
field as the interior OL releases. This isn’t a key to the defense until they
aren’t releasing outside, but up the middle of the field.

Here’s the video:

Bubble Control

Bubble control works in the same way as flare control. The
most common form of bubble control in today’s bubble screen heavy offenses is
the bubble action slip block. Here, the bubble route sucks the defense up hard
as they try to beat the blocks so they can swarm the bubble receiver. But the
blocks aren’t coming, instead, they are going to be slipped and the offense
will attack vertical off of the play.

Here’s video:

But flare control and bubble control can also be used to
help the run game, either by running draws, counters, or even normal run plays
when attached to bubble control.

Watch this defender:

Here’s the video:

Conclusion

Flare control can be an effective way to control and
manipulate underneath coverage to open up deep running receivers or open up the
middle of the field for middle screens or even run plays. Rather than forcing
yourself to have to block another person in the box, the control route simply
takes that player out of the box and essentially blocks him through the running
of the route. It is an extremely helpful addition to any offense. On top of
that, it starts getting the RBs involved in the pass game. By both running
flare screens and bubble screens and running flare control and bubble control,
the defense must respect both, and you put defenders in a constant bind for if
a player is actually getting the ball, or if the defender is simply getting
sucked away from the play. By forcing the defender to second guess his
intention, he’ll play both situations slower and therefore possibly take
himself out of either situation.

4 comments:

I wonder if that last video was a packaged play. Looks like they could have been trying to leverage that OLB between the bubble and the run, so had he attacked the RB, the QB could've flipped it to the slot receiver, now with a numbers advantage as regards blocking. Kinda similar the the stick/draw play many teams run.

It's a very good point you bring up though that I didn't touch on, in that the "flare control" action is still a threat to an offense.

In the case of a package play, you have two (or more) distinctively different plays packaged into one play, and each play within a play works to control the defense in some way (the Inception of plays if you will). So the run action controls the defense if the bubble is thrown, the bubble control holds the defense if you run the ball.

So that is a nice addition to this piece, and a big reason why I appreciate readers adding to the comments section. I certainly don't cover everything, sometimes because I can't and sometimes because I don't think of it. In this case, I didn't even think about it as an add-on feature, but your comment brought up a really good point.